Week 8: Who wins and who loses in a war on poverty?

Week 8: Who wins and who loses in a war on poverty?

DVST 6901: The global politics of development (Semester 2, 2026)
September 21, 2026

Development policy and practice will inevitably lead to a clash between cultures and distinct ways of imagining the individual’s place in a larger social order. For this reason intervention leads to unintended consequences.

Main reading: Ansell (2014), intro. and chaps. 4-5

What do you see?

• Are there situations which feel the way or work the way that looking at this image feels?

Mentimeter poll results

• A new classroom is a possibility, but working in small groups should have a purpose.
• There is a range of levels and kinds of experience with independent library research.
• We should talk about moving from an interest to a topic.
• We should talk about how to find and to evaluate sources of information.

What’s the connection?

• guanxi
• wantok
• wasta
• many others…

Is it corruption?

Are these relationships deviations?

What are the consequences of these kinds of relationships, especially for the issues we discuss in this class?

What is a topic?

A topic is like the setting of the story.

It has a

• who
• what
• where
• when

What is a possible topic that could shed light on “intimate hierarchy”?

• How can we anchor the study of this kind of social relationship in the real world in a real place and time?

Notes

Keywords

intimate hierarchies, nostalgia

Learning outcomes

• Be able to identify examples of social forces that create the conditions for political conflicts around development initiatives
• Be able to explain the unqiue qualities of ethnographic description and interpretation and be able to formulate a view on its relevance for understanding development practice